Double abductions of children are rare but not unknown

Cases of double child abductions are extremely rare, but not unprecedented.

The risk of being caught during the actual kidnap and the difficulty in controlling two children are thought to be the main reasons why there are so few multiple kidnaps.

One recent case, referred to yesterday by the father of Holly Wells, involved a paedophile who abducted two 10-year-old girls and held them for four days before being caught by the police.

Alan Hopkinson, 45, bundled the girls into the boot of his car as they stopped to ask him the time on their way to school in Hastings, East Sussex, in January 1999. He grabbed the girls so quickly they did not scream. Later that afternoon, he carried the children one at a time up to his flat in a large black sports bag. Astonishingly, no one else saw what had happened.

The girls were found four days later, locked in his flat, where they had been abused, when police went to arrest him for other offences.

He was later given nine life sentences after admitting kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault charges.

He was also given 15 concurrent five-year sentences for assaults against the girls and indecent assaults against two other children.

Holly's father, Kevin, said yesterday that he could take "some comfort" from the fact that the girls in Hastings were recovered alive after disappearing for four days.

In another double abduction, a convicted paedophile snatched Susan Blatchford, 11, and her schoolfriend Gary Hanlon, 12, in March 1970, while they were out for a walk in Enfield, north London.

He sexually assaulted the children and then murdered them. Despite a nationwide police search for the children, their bodies were not discovered for 11 weeks in a small copse on the fringes of Epping Forest.

But it took 30 years before Ronald Jebson was convicted of the crime when he confessed to the double murder, which became known as the "Babes in the Wood" killings, and was given two life sentences in 2000.

Roy Whiting, who was jailed for life for the kidnap and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne, had previously attempted to snatch two children off the street. Whiting tried to abduct three young girl friends who were playing on the street in Crawley, West Sussex, in March 1995. Two managed to escape but the third was taken prisoner and driven to a secluded spot where she was assaulted before being freed near her home.